First Battle of Ypres (1914): The End of the Race to the Sea

The First Battle of Ypres was fought from 19 October to 22 November 1914 around the Flemish town of Ypres (Ieper) in western Belgium. British, French and Belgian troops held off a powerful German offensive aimed at breaking through to the English Channel ports. The battle ended the Race to the Sea, destroyed much of Britain’s pre-war regular army and left the Western Front frozen in trenches for almost four years.

Background: the Race to the Sea

After the German retreat from the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, both sides dug in along the river Aisne. Each then tried to get around the other’s open northern flank, extending the line further north in a series of battles that became known as the Race to the Sea.

By October only a gap in Flanders remained between the armies and the North Sea coast. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under Field Marshal Sir John French was moved from the Aisne to Flanders to be closer to its supply ports. It was joined by the 7th Division and 3rd Cavalry Division, which had landed in Belgium in early October in a vain attempt to help save Antwerp, and by the Indian Corps. At the same time the new German Chief of the General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, prepared a major offensive there, using the new Fourth Army under Duke Albrecht of Württemberg, which contained several reserve corps formed largely from young volunteers, and the Sixth Army under Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria.

What happened

The two sides collided around Ypres in mid-October. The British, who had hoped to advance east, were soon forced onto the defensive by much larger German forces. The French general Ferdinand Foch coordinated the Allied effort and sent French reinforcements, while the Belgian army fought the parallel Battle of the Yser to the north, where it flooded the plain to stop the German advance.

In late October German reserve regiments attacked near Langemarck and Bixschoote and suffered terrible losses against British and French rifle and machine-gun fire. Further south, the German Sixth Army pressed the British cavalry along the Messines ridge. On 31 October the London Scottish became one of the first Territorial Force battalions to see major action there.

The crisis came on 31 October. German attacks broke through the British line at the village of Gheluvelt on the Menin Road, and for a time the British command feared a collapse. A counter-attack by the 2nd Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment, about 370 men, retook Gheluvelt Chateau and restored the line. The same day, Sepoy Khudadad Khan of the 129th Baluchis won the Victoria Cross near Hollebeke, the first awarded to an Indian soldier.

The Indian Corps, which had reached France in October, was rushed into the line south of Ypres as the British position grew desperate. Its soldiers fought in cold, wet conditions with equipment designed for other climates and suffered heavy losses. French troops also played a larger part than British popular memory often admits: by November, forces under General Victor d’Urbal held much of the northern half of the Ypres line and helped stabilise the front around Bixschoote and the Menin Road.

Among the German volunteers was Adolf Hitler, then a soldier in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment (the List Regiment), which went into its first action near Gheluvelt at the end of October.

The last great German attempt came on 11 November, when attacks including the elite Prussian Guard struck along the Menin Road. They briefly broke into the British positions at Nonne Bosschen (Nuns’ Wood) before being thrown back. As winter weather set in, the fighting died down, and the battle is officially considered to have ended on 22 November.

The medieval town of Ypres itself was shelled from late October. Its great Cloth Hall, one of the finest Gothic buildings in Flanders, was set ablaze by German shells on 22 November 1914 and was reduced to a ruin during the war. It was rebuilt over the following decades and now houses the In Flanders Fields Museum.

Key people

• Sir John French (1852–1925): commander-in-chief of the BEF.
• Douglas Haig (1861–1928): commander of the British I Corps, which bore the brunt of the fighting; he later commanded the BEF from December 1915.
• Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929): French general who coordinated the Allied armies in the north.
• Erich von Falkenhayn (1861–1922): German Chief of the General Staff, who planned the offensive.
• Albrecht, Duke of Württemberg (1865–1939): commander of the German Fourth Army.
• Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria (1869–1955): commander of the German Sixth Army, which attacked the southern part of the British line around Messines.

By the numbers

Figures depend on the dates and areas counted; German official figures for mid-October to late November give about 134,000 losses in Flanders.

Consequences

The Allies held Ypres and the Channel ports, and the war of movement in the west was over. Attacks across open ground against entrenched riflemen, machine guns and artillery had produced enormous losses for little gain, a pattern that would repeat on a vaster scale in the years ahead. A continuous line of trenches now ran from the Belgian coast to Switzerland. Ypres sat in a salient, a bulge into German-held territory overlooked by low ridges, where it would be fought over again in the Second Battle of Ypres, the first major German use of poison gas, and at Passchendaele in 1917.

For Britain the cost was immense. By the end of 1914 the BEF had suffered about 90,000 casualties since August, more than the number of infantry it had originally sent to France. The old professional army was largely gone, and the war would now be fought by Territorials, Indian and Dominion troops and the new volunteer armies raised by Lord Kitchener. Within weeks of the battle, soldiers in parts of the same front took part in the Christmas Truce.

Myths and the Langemarck legend

In Germany the heavy losses of young volunteers became known as the Kindermord bei Ypern, the Massacre of the Innocents at Ypres. A German army report of 11 November 1914 claimed that young regiments had advanced near Langemarck singing “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles”. The story was turned into a nationalist myth of heroic student sacrifice, later exploited by the Nazis. Many of the German dead of 1914 now lie in the German war cemetery at Langemark, where more than 44,000 soldiers are buried. Historians note that many of these soldiers were not students, that the attack in question took place near Bixschoote rather than Langemarck, and that the singing story cannot be verified.

Timeline

• 1914, early October: the BEF moves from the Aisne to Flanders.
• 1914, 19 October: the First Battle of Ypres begins.
• 1914, 21–24 October: German reserve regiments attack around Langemarck.
• 1914, 27–30 October: Belgian troops flood the Yser plain.
• 1914, 31 October: the line is restored at Gheluvelt; Khudadad Khan earns the Victoria Cross.
• 1914, 11 November: the Prussian Guard attack along the Menin Road is repulsed.
• 1914, 22 November: the battle officially ends.

Why it matters

First Ypres saved the Channel ports and kept Britain in the fight on the continent, but at the cost of its regular army. It also fixed the shape of the Western Front, making Ypres a byword for sacrifice; today the Menin Gate memorial, where the Last Post is sounded every evening, records over 54,000 missing soldiers of the Commonwealth.